Mountains and Aurora

This was a real depart for me in terms of style. Up until this painting I was striving for some kind of realism. Not necessarily photo realism but semi realism. But this is a lot more stylised and it was great fun to paint.

This was also the painting when I acknowledged how much I enjoy colour. I like to use a full rainbow spectrum and painting with all the colours is a feature of all my favourite works. The actual aurora is usually two or three colours so this was a lot of artistic license to chuck in the rainbow and mix it up a bit.

The aurora is much more diffuse and less ‘straight’ than in this painting. This was partially due to lack of skill as I hadn’t really got the trick of blending when I painted it. But I actually think it works quite well. It’s powerful and dramatic and I like the effect.

I was pleased with the shadowing on the ,mountains too. This was my first mountain painting since my all time least favourite painting (below) and it was satisfying to see that a lot of progress had been made.

I didn’t stick with this style though it is something I might return to in the future. But it was nice to try something new and experiment.